A Close Encounter of the Holy Kind
by INMH
Summary: Warning for excessive use of the F-bomb. Rachel's first direct encounter with 21st century humanity, though not quite how she pictured it would go.


A Close Encounter of the Holy Kind

Rating: PG-13/T

Genre: General/Drama

Summary: Warning for excessive use of the F-bomb. Rachel's first direct encounter with 21st century humanity, though not quite how she pictured it would go.

Author's Note: …It's one of those ones that just hit me and I had to roll with it while I could before I lost interest. And even then, I _procrastinated_ like a _motherf_- (BLEEEEEEEEEP-).

Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural. It belongs to Eric Kripke.

()()

The first thing Rachel feels when she wakes up is rain.

She's lying on her stomach, the ground is wet and squishy and muddy, grass soaked with rain and weighed on by her. The water has soaked through her vessel's clothing, and she knows she must be severely weakened, because she feels the raw cold acutely. It makes her shiver, makes her twitch in a way that suggests she would like to curl up into a ball to conserve what heat her body has retained.

That's when Rachel feels the pain.

It's in the small of her back, her legs, her left arm, the crown of her head and her ribs. It is as pervasive as the cold and the wet and makes her shake even harder, though that only serves to make it worse. She's a warrior, a soldier, no stranger to pain, but she quickly senses that this is the worst she's ever been injured and starts to seriously wonder if she's going to die.

Rachel struggles to remember what happened, why she is broken and bleeding on what is clearly earth and not heaven, and why she can't seem to sense any of her brothers and sisters nearby. She remembers a fight, clashing swords and screams. She remembers white-hot light that may or may not have been Raphael trying to smite them all at once. She remembers fighting one of her brothers. She remembers pain.

Right.

Orifiel.

He'd taken a chunk out of her, and Rachel is ashamed to say that she isn't certain if she managed to return the favor or not.

Without trying, Rachel hears things going on nearby: People talking. Shouting. Blaring horns that might belong to some of those screaming metal death-traps humans refer to as automobiles. She can hear panic in their voices, though it takes a moment for her to hone in on and understand what's actually being said.

"_Are you okay?_"

"**_Kff_**_. Fine. I just- I'm a little-_" A shaky sigh.

"_What the hell was that?_"

"_Did you see it?_"

"_Hey! Are you all right?_"

"_It looked like a comet_."

"_We're fine! I don't think we hit you._"

"_Or a bomb._"

"_Mommy, did someone drop a bomb on us?_"

"_No, no sweetie- Stop talking like that! It wasn't a bomb!_"

"_Then what the hell was it?_"

"_It might have been a meteor._"

"_Has anyone called 9-1-1?_"

"_I did! They're on their way!_"

"_Okay, that's good. Cassie, baby, you- Cassie! Get back here!_"

Rachel hears someone's footsteps squelching through the soggy turf until they're right next to her head. She manages to open her eyes. It's dark, fluorescent lighting from the headlights of one of the cars painting a cove of trees nearby is all she has to go by, but she can still dimly make out a small face peering at her.

"Are you okay?" The child asks. She can't be more than six or seven. "Mommy, there's a lady over here and she's really hurt!" The words she's speaking are serious, but she must be too young to grasp the severity of Rachel's injuries because with her tone, she could have just as easily been asking her mother to make her a sandwich.

"Cassie, what- Oh my God!"

Rachel twitches again, instinctively offended at the Lord's name being taken in vain and (ridiculously, considering the circumstances) begins to wonder how humans got around to doing it so casually. She can hear other people approaching now too. Maybe three others. One is clearly little Cassie's mother, because the child disappears from her view, presumably as her mother tries to spare her the horror of realizing exactly how badly Rachel is hurt.

"Ma'am? Ma'am, are you- Jesus Christ."

There it is again. If Rachel wasn't in so much pain and so utterly weak, she would be lecturing him on taking Christ's name in vain.

"What- Oh man. Oh man. Is she dead? I think she's dead."

"Jesus. It looks like someone tried to saw through her _spine_."

"You think someone hit her?"

The fact that they're concerned about her vessel's spine as well as Cassie's passive reference to her as merely a 'lady' alerts Rachel to the fact that her wings are not currently visible. While possessing a vessel, having your wings out makes them more vulnerable than if you're in your true form. However, in heaven, when you're in battle on your home ground and you're jumping left and right and flying out of the way, sometimes they come out on reflex. Rachel is almost certain hers did, because even if they aren't visible now, she can feel that they are damaged.

"Cassie, Cassie, don't look. Don't look at her, baby."

"Why? Is she okay?"

"No, baby."  
>Rachel grimaces and tries to move. She isn't certain what humans do with dead bodies, but even if their advancements in corpse preservation have gone any farther than they were 2000 years ago, she does not want them thinking that she's dead. If pain had a sound all its own, Rachel's would be an ear-splitting screech of metal dragging down metal, nails on a chalkboard, because it is agonizing in ways she can't even think of explaining. All the same, though, she manages to move, manages to maneuver her arm beneath her and push upward just enough for them to notice.<p>

"Man, where are the para- _Fuck me!_"

The man that had noted her spinal injury sounds as though he's all but jumped away from her, and Rachel is curious to know if she really _looks_ as bad as they make her sound or if it's merely humans being overdramatic. What they view as fatal may not be that serious for her (though she can't deny that she is gravely, gravely injured).

"What? What?"

"She moved!"

"Oh no way, no fucking way. Her friggin' spine's been cut, even if she is alive she shouldn't be able to-" He stops, and he must have looked closer, because his next words come out with a breath. "_Fuck._ She is."

Rachel wants to snap at them, wants to tell them not to talk about her like she's not right there next to them. But her mouth isn't working. Her jaw might be broken, because it burns when she tries to open her mouth. Moving is pointless; even if she could stand, she can't walk. Better to just lay here and…

…Call her brothers and sisters.

Everything's happening so fast that she's forgotten the obvious solution: Call for help in a way only she can.

_Castiel. Balthazar. Tabris. Nuriel. Daniel. Selaphiel. Ramiel. Seleniel. Sariel. Asriel. Micah. Taharial. Ariel. Camael. _

She chants the names on the frequency only they can pick up. Maybe one of them is closer than the others. Maybe one of them will hear her and come.

_I'm hurt. I need help. Please come._

She isn't certain how long she's been there, how long she was disoriented and possibly unconscious. She hopes that the fight is over. She hopes that they've won.

And if they have, Rachel hopes they're all alive to celebrate it.

"Where in the _fuck_ are the paramedics?"

"It's still pretty bad out. They might be having trouble getting through." There's a sound of rustling clothes, and suddenly she feels something being draped over her back. One of the men has removed their coat and covered her with it. Rachel is still irritated at the blasphemy, but is soothed a bit by this kindness, this kind of act that had been a very large driving point behind Castiel's 'We-Really-Shouldn't-Wipe-Out-Humanity' campaign. "Miss, help's on the way, just hang on a bit longer."

She wants to tell him that there's no point at hanging on for help from more humans; they don't have the tools to heal her injuries. Only other angels would be able to help her now. And if that help doesn't come soon…

Rachel thinks that one of her brothers or sisters might have mentioned that some humans had proven that positive outlooks and attitudes had a major impact on their lifespan and ability to endure, but she is reasonably certain that when you look like someone tried to "saw through her spine" there isn't much that cheerful attitudes can do for you.

She listens, waits to see if she can hear someone calling back to her, searching for her amongst a relative sea of humans covering the face of the earth, because the battle was big and violent and chaotic and they might not have seen her fall from the sky, and if her grace is low then she might be hard for them to track, and though Rachel isn't into the 'positive-outlooks-make-for-better-recovery' bit, she's not willing to descend into the negativity that will come about if she thinks of what will happen to her if no one comes and she's left alone-

Suddenly, the sound of a siren cuts into the background, through the pouring rain and the car alarms and chattering people on the road nearby. "Is that them?"

"Course it is. Who else could it be?"

"You said it yourself: It's a bad night. They could be heading to some other emergency."

But the sirens only get louder until they're right nearby. Evidently the sirens are only meant to function when the vehicle it's attached to is moving, because it gives a stuttered cry before shutting down, the area around them returning to relatively blissful silence.

Rachel manages a slight sigh, and it makes her human ribs screech. She hates loud noises, though she grudgingly admits that if this is some kind of emergency vehicle that's arrived a loud siren probably serves some kind of purpose (She can probably think of one if she tries, but she's not too keen on focusing on something so banal right now).

"Hey! Hey!"

One of the men goes back to the road, presumably directing them over to where she's lying. From what she's heard, she's the only one injured. She manages some slight relief at that, given that she now realizes that she's probably the one that caused the accident in the first place, however unintentional it was. Given the speed at which she was falling, her grace shielding her, she probably did look like a comet or falling meteor to the human eye. Her impact, at the very least, would have been flashy. If she was lying in a crater or some similarly damaged land, it might be too messy and dark for them to see it.

There's the sound of people approaching again, the same man from before and two others. There's also, curiously enough, the sound of clacking metal. "…sure what happened, no one remembers seeing her in the road, no one remembers hitting her, and that lady up there was checking the cars to see if there was any blood on them, but nothing."

Two people kneel beside her, and she feels the coat being peeled away from her back. Given how it sticks, she knows it must be soaked with blood.

"Christ Almighty."

_Again_ with the blasphemy.

"Is that her spine?" One of the new voices whispers, presumably to whoever he's with and trying not to let anyone else hear. "Am I seriously looking at her spine right now? And she's still alive?"

Rachel feels a hand sliding around to the front of her neck, checking for a pulse. "Uh, yeah. Yeah she is."

"This is going to be one of those freaky ones we never forget, won't it?"

"Probably. Ma'am? Ma'am, can you hear me? Can you respond in any way?"

Rachel makes no move to communicate. She has nothing to say to them. If she wanted to bother, she would say that there's nothing they can do for her, that they have no means to heal her. But humans are notoriously thick-skulled and stubborn, and they would probably keep trying anyway. And they might end up asking why she thought they couldn't help her, and having to explain what she was to people who didn't believe she existed (even those who claimed to be devout didn't believe they were looking at an angel when they saw one) would be messy, time-consuming and pointless.

Rachel knows there's a word for these men, she thinks she heard one of the other men say it earlier- ah, right, _paramedics_, from the Greek 'para' meaning 'near' and the suffix 'medic' relating to medicine. Thankfully they've based their language and words on the ones that were predominant when she last walked the earth. A paramedic, or a medic, or doctor, that was near…? Perhaps it denoted some kind of specialty in the medical field. Emergency medical care, maybe? Specifically for people involved in accidents? Or maybe, given that they were mobile, people who couldn't reach a medical center by any other means?

The paramedics start talking to one another, and she hisses when they poke and prod and push and try to get a better scope of her injuries. Much of what they say is medical lingo, words shortened into acronyms and nicknames for the sake of expediency. Occasionally, the language of medical professionals is broken by intermittent utterances of profanity and blasphemy along the lines of "_Fuck-_ing- What happened _there?_" and "Jesus Christ, no _car_ did this."

Rachel knows they're trying to help, but the winning combination of facts that they _can't_ and they're only making it more painful as they do is making her irritable, to say nothing of her growing fear as she fails to hear her brothers or sisters calling out to her. Are they dead? Are they alive and too injured to come? Or in the chaos of battle and possibly its aftermath have they still failed to notice that she is missing? Has her call to them not gone through?

A terrifying thought occurs to her. What if Raphael or one of his followers heard the call? What if one of them responded to come and finish her off? Rachel knows that there are, at least, eight to ten humans in the immediate vicinity, based on the varying voices she'd heard calling to one another earlier. Raphael hates humanity, and many of his followers are of a similar mind frame. If they come, they will likely kill everyone in the area without hesitation, and Rachel will feel awful if these people are killed simply because she is there.

Of course, if Raphael or one of his men really does come, she's fairly certain she won't be alive long enough to truly agonize over it.

"I don't get it," Is the first sentence from the paramedic to her left's mouth that does not agitate her. "She's hurt. She's bleeding real bad. But she hasn't gone into hypovolemic shock, and her blood-pressure's _normal_."

_So?_ Rachel thinks, completely failing to understand what those things mean for a human body. They didn't have ways of measuring those kinds of things when she'd last dealt with humanity.

"_Normal?_ How can it be normal? It should be getting weaker."

"Fuck if I know. She's still warm, too- I mean, a little clammy because she's been lying in mud and rain for God-knows how long, but too warm to be in shock."

"So what do we do?"

"Get her on the gurney and hope to high-hell this means she'll live to see tomorrow."

"It's usually one or the other, isn't it? A really good sign or a really, really fucking bad one." There is a pause, and Rachel senses that this remark was not well met, because he follows up with a quiet. "Sorry. Right." Perhaps discussing a patient's potential lifespan in front of said patient is frowned upon.

Together they roll her over and Rachel lets out a choked noise when they jostled the back/spinal wound and her ribs, which she now fully realizes must be badly shattered. Now on her back, the paramedics hesitate. "You see any injuries?"

"…Uh… No? I don't think so. It's hard to tell; that might be mud on her shirt."

"Might be blood too."

Carefully, one of them started to roll up the sky-blue shirt her vessel had been wearing the day Rachel had possessed her. Rachel growls a little, a sound that never quite leaves her throat. Being prodded at is bad enough; being exposed even more than she already is is just embarrassing. "Aw, fuck."

"What?"

"I don't see any stab wounds or anything, but this-" Rachel can sense his finger hovering just barely above the skin of her stomach and rib area, "-this is one big bruise."

"You sure it's not mud?" The other medic sounded astonished. "It's really… _Dark._"

"Yeah, I'm sure."

"Think someone might have beaten her up and dumped her out here?"

"Don't know, and right now, don't care: Our job is to keep her alive. The cops get to play the 'whodunnit' game. You see anything else we should be worried about?"

"…No. Nothing serious."

"Okay. On three-"

The sound of metal she'd heard when the paramedics first arrived must have been the gurney, because they manage to pick her up and carefully (but heavily) deposit her onto it, carefully rolling her slightly onto her side so that the wound on her back isn't further agitated. Rachel feels them strap her down as best they can, and here she protests, squirming a bit and trying to push them off. Restraint is bad. She can't protect herself when she's restrained. She can't protect herself anyway, but being restrained makes her feel particularly helpless.

But she's too weak to stop them, and as soon as she's secured the paramedics start hauling the gurney back to the paved road, where they set her down and roll her from there. Rachel opens her eyes as best as she can, and she sees the two men and the little girl's mother standing nearby. Dimly, she can see the girl, Cassie, in the back seat of the car, watching curiously from the window.

"She gonna be all right?" One of the men asks. He's wearing a windbreaker and a baseball cap. He's younger than the other man, who might be in his forties or fifties. This is the man that was scared half to death when Rachel managed to move on her own. The older man, in a flannel shirt and lacking any protective covering from the rain, must have been the one that gave her his jacket.

"Don't know yet," One of the paramedics responds tersely. That's all he says as they lift her into the vehicle and settle her into a spot that stops the gurney from rolling and adjusting the legs so that they fold down and she feels herself getting lower. The walls are very close in here; she's never been inside an automobile before.

The paramedic that spoke climbs in with her, while the other shuts the doors and presumably goes around to the driver's seat and starts the vehicle, because a moment later the engine rumbles and that siren starts again, louder and more piercing than Rachel cares for.

Rachel also finds, right off the bat, that she does _not_ enjoy automobiles.

Granted, she enjoys absolutely nothing about this situation anyway, so perhaps she's misjudging. But she doesn't like that she's in a vehicle that a human is driving through awful weather (and she senses he'd be going a lot faster if the weather were not so terrible), a vehicle whose speed and destination she has absolutely no control over, while strapped to a gurney, in horrible pain and unable to move or communicate.

The paramedic beside her is talking with the other up front in some more of that medical lingo that she can barely understand, though she can glean that he's telling the other what he's doing and updating him on her condition. He's messing with something to her left, something she can't bother to look and see (it's not like she can do anything about it anyway, right?), and he must be nervous because he actually starts speaking directly to her.

"Hey, I don't know if you can hear me or not, but if you can? Try to stay awake, all right? Don't doze off. You might have a concussion for all we know. It'll take a while to get to the hospital in this crap-fest of a storm, but we should be there in roundabout twenty minutes. There's not much I can do for you now other than start up an IV drip and try to keep pressure on that nasty thing on your back."

IV drip. Rachel mulls over that for a moment. It clearly stands for something medical-related, and she can't help but think she's heard the phrase somewhere before. She forces her eyes open again and manages to turn her head to the left, blurrily regarding the man. He's hooking a bag up to a small metal stand; there's a thin tube attached to the bag, and at the end he's fitting a tiny needle on. IV- Intravenous, into the veins. She isn't certain what's in the bag and doesn't care. It won't help her.

He finishes and holds the needle in one hand, moving to roll up the sleeve on her left arm.

"All right, I've got the _JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!_"

Rachel groans a little at this particularly strong bit of blasphemy, but starts herself when she hears a voice from her right side say:

"…I'm sorry… I am not him."

Suddenly, the radio from the front cab springs to life, blaring a song:

"_Oh, he doesn't look a thing like Jesus, but he-_

_Talks like a gentleman, like you imagined when you_

_Were young-_"

"Balthazar. That was not funny."  
>"Wasn't me."<p>

"Tabris."  
>"I thought it was a kick."<p>

"WHERE THE **_FUCK_** DID YOU PEOPLE COME FROM?"

"Would you believe Boca Raton?" Is Balthazar's bright reply, as though humans were accustomed to strange people appearing out of thin air. Rachel, with no small effort, turns her head to the right, and when she does she sees Castiel staring down at her, worried. She feels his hand on her shoulder and sighs with utter relief. Her brothers and sister had come for her. She is safe now.

"So sorry to drop in on you like this, but we thought it would be best to have as few witnesses to us spiriting Rachel away as possible. You fellows _do_ tend to panic when people randomly appear out of thin air." So relieved and so happy, Rachel almost chuckles as the insanely conversational tone Tabris takes with the human, who is clearly shell-shocked.

"Thank you for helping our sister," Castiel says more formally, gravely. "But you can't do anything more for her. We can." His hand tightens slightly on Rachel's shoulder, and she prepares to be flown off. "We thank you again. Good bye."

They fly off, though to the humans they will seem to have disappeared into thin air.

Gone without a trace.

()()

Millions of years ago, when Rachel was a very small child by angelic reckoning (considered even younger than little Cassie was), Tabris had played a nasty trick on her. She had asked her little sister to shut her eyes and hold out her hand, and Rachel, trusting her big sister with all of her heart, had done so without question. Tabris had then proceeded to drop a very early, very _ugly_ specimen of arachnid into her hand, and when Rachel had opened her eyes, she'd screamed in fright and dropped the offending creature in spite of the fact that it was incapable of harming her.

Tabris had thought it a good joke, whereas Rachel had been furious. But because Tabris seemed to shake off her little sister's anger with such ease, Rachel had deemed that the only way she could get a reaction from her would be to say something as hurtful as she could. "I hate you!" She'd screeched, and yes, Tabris had been hurt. For weeks the pair didn't speak to one another.

It had, ironically enough, been Michael who had intervened, dragging the two into each other's presence and reminding them that their Father said that they needed to forgive those who sinned against them. "Rachel, you do not hate Tabris. You are merely angry with her. You must never say hatred when you don't feel it. And Tabris, you must be kind to your sister. You must not anger her to a point where she feels that all she wants to do is hurt you."

Funny to remember how Michael had actually been decent once.

Whatever else he'd done, Rachel is glad that she forgave Tabris. Tabris is her sister, one of her best friends, and she can't imagine what she would do without her. At the moment, Tabris is keeping her company as she finishes convalescing. Balthazar is there too, jumping in and on occasion arguing profusely with her.

"You know, they have this delightful drink called a Flaming Jagerbomb, and I swear if you drink enough of them you start hallucinating that you're dancing on the moon with a dog wearing a purple hat."

"No, Tabris," Balthazar sighs. "We went over this: You weren't hallucinating. That pagan god Coyote slipped you something in your drink and took you dancing." Tabris shakes her head skeptically.

"They don't make drugs strong enough."

"He's a Trickster, darling, and the Native Americans are well known for using various herbs and other plants in their practices of faith. I have no doubt that over the years he managed to combine some of those in such a way that even an angel could be turned into giggling mess." Tabris thinks about this for a moment, but then shrugs as though it's no big deal that Coyote slipped her something and did heaven knew what else with her whilst she was out of her head.

Rachel shakes her head. Only Tabris. And Balthazar, of course, because she can picture him reacting similarly if put into the same situation.

She's been resting for almost a week; as she had suspected, she had indeed been very, very seriously injured, though Castiel was kind enough not to comment on her condition until he was certain that she would be okay, and even then he was more tactful than to blatantly express his shock and horror at the extent of her injuries.

To think their war had only just begun, and she was nearly killed at the start. Rachel keeps the sentiment to herself, but she's resolved to push herself harder, to make sure she never gets that badly beaten again.

She's grateful that Castiel, Balthazar and Tabris came when they did. After realizing how close she came to death, Rachel cannot fathom dying alone amongst humans without so much as a single brother or sister nearby. She isn't certain if there's an afterlife for angels, so she might not have had time after to dwell on it, but Rachel cannot think of a more depressing way to go.

"So anyway, there's this place in northern Florida called the Golden Flamingo-"

"You've been there too?"

"How do we _not_ run into each other more often on earth?"

"You met Dingo?"

"Yes I met Dingo; he showed me an impressive trick with a shot glass, a container of gun powder and a roll of duct-tape-"

"I think perhaps I should stop entering the room when you two are in the middle of a conversation." Castiel has appeared, and is now eyeing his brother and sister with something like fear. "I almost never understand what you're talking about."

"I heard the conversation from the beginning and _I_ don't understand what it's about." Rachel assures him. Balthazar snorts.

"Pfft. Silly little virgins, the both of you: Get laid and enter the grown-up world." Castiel gives him a flat look, and Balthazar holds up his hands. "Easy now, baby brother. Tabris, let's leave them alone: If we're lucky, they'll pop each other's cherries and the sticks will falls out of their hindquarters." Tabris snickers, and a moment later they're gone.

Castiel blinks at Rachel. "Cherries?"

"I have no idea." It is probably something rude, though, and odds are Balthazar is counting on the idea that they won't understand what he said to stop him from getting _his_ hindquarters kicked when Rachel is okayed for active duty again, which is hopefully what Castiel is here to talk about.

He sits down next to her. "How are you feeling?"

"Better."

"Really better, or are you just saying that so I'll let you onto the field again?"

"Is 'both' an appropriate answer here?" Castiel smiles. Rachel is very aware that she's gotten sassier since embracing free will, but Castiel has yet to raise any complaints about it. Quite the opposite, he seems to enjoy it.

"You're eager to be out and about again, aren't you?" Rachel nods.

"Mm." She says. "If it's all right with you, I would like to go back down to earth for a little while. There's something I have to take care of." Castiel looks at her warily.

"Nothing that requires much exertion, I hope?" She smiles.

"Not at all. Just something I have to return."

()()

Jack Barlow had seen a lot in his forty-seven years.

As a volunteer at the police station, you get to see lots of whackos getting hauled in for a lot of whacky things: Drug-induced disturbances, public indecency, trying to rob drug stores dressed as a badger; You know, generally _weird_ shit.

Last week, though, was weird on so many different levels.

Jack lived not far from where he and his nephew Dane were driving when that light fell from the sky and the cars skidded to a stop and crashed and, all at once, everyone's car alarms and headlights and radios started going haywire.

When Marcy Bell's kid Cassie, a lady and her daughter he knew from church and generally around their small Vermont town, found that woman lying off the side of the road he assumed that she'd gotten rammed by one of the cars on the road and no one had really noticed because of the darkness and then the stark whiteness of that light all mixed with the rain and mess of the night.

He had doubts, but at the time, they'd slid to the back of his mind. Doubts like, _the closest house to here is mine and she didn't come from my house, _and _who in the hell would be walking at this time of night in this kind of weather_, as well as _fuck me if a car did **that** to her back. _At the time, though, Jack had been less concerned about what happened and more concerned with making sure the woman didn't die in the mud and muck before the ambulance could arrive.

But seven and a half days later, the Saturday following the one of the accident, he sat in his kitchen tapped his finger on the table, and was bothered.

The doubts came back stronger than ever, especially since what had happened since then.

Jack had felt bad for that lady. He really had. He didn't have a clue in hell what had happened to her, but she didn't look like a bad sort; hell, she looked like she could have been one of the teachers at the elementary school. He wanted to check up on her and make sure she was okay.

Only apparently, she never got to the hospital.

"Someone intercepted the ambulance and took her out. There's a formal inquiry going on, state police and all. The Feds might get involved." The secretary at the ER desk muttered darkly, clearly displeased at the sort of hassle this sort of thing was going to impose on them.

He found one of the medics, a guy named Brandon, who gave him the Thousand-Yard Stare and shook his head. "Don't ask me, man. _I'm_ not even sure what happened. Don't even ask me." He walked away muttering something about ghosts.

And on his way home from that enlightening event, Jack had driven right by the site of the accident. He went right by it, noted it, thought about it, and then suddenly did an abrupt u-turn on the road and went back to look at it again.

Jack hadn't noticed that night, and for some reason hadn't noticed the previous two days- this had been on Tuesday- that the area where they'd found the woman (and he knew the exact location because the dirt was still discolored from her blood) had been hollowed out, was a massive crater in the grass and soil by the side of the road. Dammit, Jack drove by that spot _every damn day_, and there had never been a crater there before.

Jack had thought.

And thought.

And thought.

And thought, until he had to dismiss the crazy thoughts from his head by force.

All he could think about was how that light had cut right across the road and seemed to impact right nearby, and that it had interfered with the radio and lights and alarms and yet stopped when the light diminished, and how that woman was positioned, how she would have been lying right in the epicenter of the crater. How the paramedics had been shocked that she was so hurt and yet still alive and, judging from their amazement, in a better state internally than she should have been.

The way Jack saw it, there were two options: One, whatever had fallen, that stark white light, had hit and hurt the woman somehow. The flaw with that theory was that there was no debris from whatever it was and the woman's injuries were too varied and spread out to be the result of one solitary thing smashing into her.

The second option was the crazy one, and that was that the woman _had_ been the falling object.

Still failed to explain her injuries, because your back doesn't get sawed open from a fall, but Jack was less concerned about explaining that and more concerned about how a woman could appear to be a huge, bright white light that fell from the sky and impacted the earth hard enough to make a significantly sized hole and still _live_ through it.

It opened up a world of possibilities that sane people did not delve into, and Jack was plenty sane. The curiosity was eating away at him, but he was currently trying to force himself to resign to the fact that this was going to be one of those weird, creepy encounters that went unexplained for the remainder of his life, the type of story people wouldn't believe when you told them.

Jack sighed and supposed that everyone had one.

He hoped.

Jack stiffened suddenly.

From the front hallway he had heard a rustling noise, like a strong wind blowing a flag. In this case, a few flags.

Problem was, there wasn't a flag in the front hallway: Just coats and boots and rock-salt and bird seed. And there was no wind in the house or outside: All of the windows were shut and the summer air was stagnant. And he was very, very certain that he was totally alone within the house: His wife Martha was out to lunch with her sister and the dog was sleeping in the grass outside.

Jack owned a rifle, but it was upstairs under the bed. He didn't tug it out for trespassers or the potential midnight burglar, but for the fisher cats that prowled the area and liked to eat house cats, as well as the possible bear that might get a little too close to the house and not want to leave so easily.

He took a moment of consideration, wondering if he should get the rifle or not. On one hand, he'd just been pondering a very alarming subject and was probably on the paranoid side. Besides, it wasn't as though someone could have gotten into the hall without him hearing or seeing.

On the other than, that noise had definitely come from the hall, and he could think of no other explanation for it coming than _Someone is in that hall making that noise._

Jack slowly rose from his seat at the kitchen table and started to move towards the hall, mindful of every floorboard he knew to be creaky and to keep his footfalls soft and unnoticeable. He was hypersensitive to every sound, every sight, waiting for some kind of signal that he should run or attack, whether he was dealing with a human or an animal that might have gotten in and whether or not he should be praying right now-

Jack stepped into the hall and turned right to face the door.

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

No person.

No animal.

Nothing.

Jack heaved a sigh and slapped his forehead. "_Moron_. Getting all freaked out over a stupid noise, probably heard a car misfiring on the road or something and I just didn't process it right-"

Jack froze.

He actually felt his _lungs_ stop contracting, falling to stillness in his chest and leaving him without air.

At first he'd taken no notice of the dark brown jacket hanging on the hook a few feet from him. It was the jacket he usually wore when the weather turned rotten, the one he used during spring, summer and fall, reserving the heavier one for winter. That was where he always hung it, and that was where it usually was if not on his back.

Thing was, he only had _one_ of that jacket.

And there was no mistaking the fact that the last time he'd seen that jacket was last week, when he'd draped it over that woman in the crater so that she would have to get any more wet and uncomfortable than she undoubtedly already was. It had still been half-on her when the paramedics had wheeled her away, too focused on loading her into the ambulance to untangle the jacket from her.

Jack had not gotten that jacket back. So it should not be here right now.

And given the way she had been bleeding, it should have been _drenched_ in that woman's blood.

And yet here it was, right where it always was and in the same state it more or less had always been in.

Jack heaved a slow, shaky sigh painfully as his lungs were forced to function again. The hand on his hip was trembling visibly.

That noise combined with the jacket coming back and the circumstances of that accident and that _woman_-

Jack shivered, wheeled around and went up to his room to lie down.

Yeah, this was definitely going to be one of _those_ stories.

-End


End file.
